Intel Pushes SandyBridge; MeeGo for Atom

At its investor meeting today, Intel showed some new demonstrations of its upcoming Sandy Bridge microarchitecture and spoke about how the company is broadening its line.

At its investor meeting today, Intel showed some new demonstrations of its upcoming Sandy Bridge microarchitecture and spoke about how the company is broadening its line. Dadi Perlmutter, EVP and GM of the Intel Architecture Group, showed several demonstrations on machines based on the Sandy Bridge architecture: the next "tock" in the company's "tick/tock" plan for alternating between process changes and architecture changes

Perlmutter said the company planned to ship SandyBridge-based products to its customers this year and launch it early in 2011. This chip will integrate the graphics controller and memory controller on the die. He pushed demonstrations focusing on graphics on the chip, saying Intel will be able to show an order of magnitude improvement between 2008 and 2011. In a demo showing World of Warcraft on a 65-nm integrated graphics solution Intel shipped in 2008 versus the 32-nm graphics the company expects to ship with SandyBridge later this year, the experience looked much smoother and faster.

Another demo showed how much faster it was to convert a video clip on a SandyBridge-based laptop as compared with one using a Core i7 laptop. Another demo pushed the idea that discrete graphics alone weren't enough for gaming, showing that a Gulftown 6-core chip and moving the display of rain from the GPU to the CPU allowed for more realism; and then also allowed for a multi-way video chat.

All this was part of a larger theme: how the company has changed its design focus. In past years, Perlmutter said, Intel created one basic design and then used it in lots of markets. Now the company is focusing on products for different markets. He distinguished between the Intel architecture, which provides software compatibility, and various microarchitectures, which are used by the internal developers to provide different capabilities within the chips while still letting the chips use the same software.

For instance, he said, for full-power chips, the Nehalem microarchitecture provides 45-nm and 32-nm variants (known as Westmere). The Sandy Bridge microarchitecture will be used on 32-nm next, and then on the first 22-nm products (known as Ivy Bridge). For Atom, Intel has the Bonnell microarchitecture for 45-nm products; the Saltwell architecture for 32-nm; and a future microarchitecture for 22-nm.

Perlmutter explained that at each process node, there is a tradeoff between leakage (and thus power consumption) and transistor performance (switching speed). So on each process, there is the opportunity to keep the power envelope but increase power, or to cut power requirements dramatically with the same performance.

Then Intel can take these microarchitectures and cores and combine them in different ways to create various products. On the full power line, that includes everything from notebooks to normal servers to multiprocessor servers. For Atom, that can be everything from netbooks to SoCs (system on chip designs) for handhelds or embedded markets.. He said there would be more than 20 SoCs on 22nm, each optimized for different markets. This allows products that can balance performance, features, and power.

For instance, Perlmutter talked about the "power gate" technology that allows transistors not to use power when they aren't being used, and how that enabled the company's "Turbo Boost" technology which shuts off some cores and gives more performance to the cores that are being used. He said this will be refined more in the future, but now can allow up
to 1 GHz more performance on a single core in some cases. Going
forward, he talked about using the same technology in a chip that has
both the CPU and the graphics. Perlmutter said this works on today's
chips (which include separate dies for CPUS and graphics in the same
chip package) and would be better in a chip that had combined the
functions in the same die.

Perlmutter also pushed hyper-threading technology, saying it uses 20
percent more silicon but provides 40 percent more performance. He
contrasted this with adding more cores (which he said Intel was doing as
well), as that doubles the silicon requirements but provides only 1.8
or so times the performance. Both, he said, are important.

On the software side, Renee James, SVP and GM of the Software and
Services Group, pushed Atom development, saying the company was signing
up lots of developers for the platform, and the AppUp program which,
provides a framework that Intel OEMs can use to create their own app
stores.

She said Atom is the "port of choice" with support for Windows, MeeGo,
Android, and Chrome. But she seemed most animated in talking about
MeeGo, an open-source unifed software platform that will work across all
the Atom products, from netbooks to TVs to handsets to media phones.

James said Intel would be creating separate user interfaces and stacks
of software for each segment of the market, including TVs, handset,
slates and tablets ; and this would be supported by Wind River services.

On netbooks, she said, Windows is currently available with MeeGo 1.0.
Chrome OS will be available later, and Intel AppUp is in beta now. For
tablets, she said, choices are Windows 7 Premium edition (which
includes pinch-and-touch support), with MeeGo expected in beta in June
and shipping in Q3 and Android support expected in the "Froyo" release;
with AppUp for tablets expected in Q3.

For smartphones, the developer preview version of MeeGo is available
now; the final version is expected to be released in the second half of
the year. For TVs, Telecom Italia has a version now, with the consumer
release expected in the second half of the year. And for embedded
devices, the preview release is out now with the final version expected
in Q2.

James also talked about Intel's larger development program, which she
describes as the third-largest software development program in the
world. In particular, she noted the company's efforts in parallel
computing, where Intel has acquired Clik Arts and RapidMind; and its
acquisition of Wind River systems for embedded, handheld and consumer
electronics. She said Wind River is both a leader in embedded software
solutions and the leading system integrator for MeeGo and Android in
handsets, and that is important in pushing Atom into more segments.
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Michael J. Miller's Forward Thinking Blog: forwardthinking.pcmag.com
Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.
Until late 2006, Miller was the Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, responsible for overseeing the editorial positions of Ziff Davis's magazines, websites, and events. As Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Publishing since 1997, Miller took an active role in...
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